


Split-Second Decisions

by TheTriggeredHappy



Category: X-Ray & Vav (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Mad King wins, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 07:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5238941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTriggeredHappy/pseuds/TheTriggeredHappy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When X-Ray is given a choice, he's never been good at thinking it through. It's these split-second decisions that make all the difference.<br/>(In which X-Ray hits the button on the remote and the Mad King wins.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Split-Second Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> [Hey all! This is my first fic on this site, hope you enjoy my take on what would've happened if X-Ray chose the other option.]

The skyline was silent but for the wailing of sirens, which everyone always prays are further than they seem to be. A billboard advertising milk is one of the few flat surfaces left without graffiti, too high for any sane person with vandalistic tendencies to climb to. Perhaps it was the new king’s way of mocking them.

After taking over the city, the king took the world on shortly after, stealing the life of its citizens only long enough to force the global leaders to hand over their positions. Any who didn’t were left to fend for themselves, connections to the rest of the world cut off. Then business resumed as usual but for a few details: Crime rate skyrocketed. Banks were no longer safe from mysterious gangs. Suddenly laws were being made a lot faster globally. There had been no news from most of South Asia for months. In a small, worthless town somewhere, two local heroes had disappeared, and a third admitted to a mental health institution that had formerly held the town’s now most beloved citizen.

Nobody knew why, except for a few of the guards assigned to the case. But word was that the new patient and his partner in justice had broken into some laboratory, and he had killed the other using some of the deadly machinery inside. The courts dropped the case after several months of deliberation, as it was unclear exactly what had happened inside to lead to the death of this friend, if it had been in cold blood or in self-defense. They had already allegedly been arguing for some time. He was excused after pleading insanity, which decidedly was appropriate given... several factors. Now he sat in a cell, his only belongings the clothes on his back, the glasses on his face, and a rock that he would murmur to occasionally. But he hadn’t spoken a word to anyone else since police had found him in the wreckage of the fire, curled in a ball, nothing but a blankness and terror on his face. His hand held only a charred remote and that same, small rock.

Doctors decided to let him keep it. When they tried to confiscate it from him, they found that he had a tendency to lash out, begin acting violent and erratic. He rarely ate, even more rarely slept—or perhaps he slept with his eyes open, because it wasn’t often that guards would find him sleeping on the cot in one corner of his cell. At one point, during a therapy session, he was asked why his friend had died. This was the first and last time he had looked someone in the eye since the accident. He had simply stared at the woman behind the desk until guards came to return him to his cell once it was clear he wasn’t speaking.

“Ray.” The voice came, quietly. “You can hear me, can’t you?”

The Puerto Rican lad said nothing.

“Ray, can you please put down your rock friend and look at me?”

His eyes were fixed on the stone in his hand. The marker face had begun fading. Dwaine was leaving him too.

“Ray, can you tell me what happened with your friend?” the voice said, even, not rising in pitch, not changing, only pausing, waiting for him to answer. It was an hour every day of her asking him questions. He didn’t think he could speak anymore. He remembered fire.

“Ray, I wish you would answer me.” Not pleading, a simple statement.

He remembered fire. He remembered a burning, an anger that wouldn’t subside, the lab burning to the ground, and laughter, laughter, more laughter. He remembered falling to the ground, he remembered Ash screaming, he remembered Hilda screaming, both telling him to run away, both telling the Mad King to get away, saying that he needed to run, they needed to go, the building was burning, the evidence was being destroyed, Gavin was dead, his friend was dead. He remembered Vav's eyes being terrified. God, he was so terrified, why had he pressed the button? Why had he pressed the button? Why had he pressed the button? The Mad King, watching him with bragging, bright blue and not terrified eyes, standing with such a confident smirk, telling X-Ray everything he had been telling himself. Not pushing him to do it or to stop, simply reminding him of everything that had happened to him. He remembered the regret filling him as Gavin—no, his name was Vav. As Vav, his best friend, his second friend after this rock in his hands, sobbed into the duct tape over his mouth and squinted his eyes closed, scared of what was to come.

At least it was fast.

“Ray, you—“

He looked up, tears streaming down his face, uninhibited. His eyes were blank still, but now they dripped, tears falling gratuitously. His hands gripped the rock tightly, and his glasses were sliding down his nose.

The woman pushed her own glasses up her nose, waiting to see if he would speak. She wasn’t the same woman as last time. This one was the lady who had let him enter the cell of the Mad King. The one who had allowed him to begin suspecting the inevitable. The one who had warned him. He’d told him what would happen.

He wished he had a dad.

He looked back down at the rock, curling in upon himself, beginning to whisper words quietly to it, his voice hoarse from lack of use. “You weren’t there to meet him, I should’ve brought you with me, I might’ve been less scared, but he warned me we would fall apart, that he would leave me all alone. It was just like the kids at school said before Pa. You weren’t there then either. I should never have put you down. Never, never, never, never…” He chanted under his breath, tears falling carelessly, the woman behind the desk feeling it strike her to the core. She had survived the Mad King, but the patient in front of her was no more than a boy, really.

He didn’t deserve this. She had read the small file—he and the former friend had been close since early elementary school. His father left when he was young, and he had been bullied in the years following. He had begun showing signs of social anxiety in the early years, appearing to grow out of them towards the end of high school.

“Ray, are you still listening?” she asked carefully. He didn’t stop murmuring, and as he repeated the word over, and over, and over, it started becoming less and less coherent. “Ray, I’m going to have to send you back to your quarters soon you know. I would hate to make this the first time you get sent back early since you started going to therapy.”

He petered out, but he didn’t look up at her still. Instead of just letting him go, she spoke quiet words about… some important thing he was likely supposed to remember, no doubt. He wasn’t listening anymore. Not to anyone, not anymore, never again. Never again. Even if he did, he would never get Vav back. He could never fix what he had done.

Reading the medical file displayed on his computer screen, the Mad King was satisfied. He knew he had only good options walking into this fight. X-Ray would press the button and either the Mad King would gain a new loyal ally (or pawn to be sacrificed, if need be), or he would snap free of the last tethers holding him to reality. Either way, the last person who would avenge Vav was gone, one way or another.

He had won. The city was his, the heroes were dead or gone, and nobody in the world could ever hope to beat him, not with all the firepower in the world.

Long live the king.

**Author's Note:**

> [Hope you enjoyed, drop me a kudos or a comment if you liked it and would like to see more, and have a wonderful week!]


End file.
